Bill Gates: Wind and Solar Are 'Cute'

Bill Gates said technologies like solar photovoltaics and LED lights were "cute" but could never deal with the bigger issue of climate change and powering the developing world while speaking in New York City on Tuesday.

Of course, in 1989, Gates, the billionaire founder of software-giant Microsoft in Redmond Wash., also famously said, "We will never make a 32-bit operating system." Only four years later, in 1993, 'never' apparently happened when the 32-bit Windows NT 3.1 was launched. More recently, in 2004, Gates predicted during a talk at the World Economic Forum that: "Spam will be a thing of the past in two years’ time." Gates' math on the end of spam was off by at least five years and still counting.

On Tuesday, Gates called for spending more money developing a new generation of energy technologies rather than investing in the game-of-inches needed to improve today's energy technologies during a keynote speech at WIRED's third annual conference, Disruptive by Design.

"Can we, by increasing efficiency [technologies], deal with our climate problem?" Gates said. "The answer there is basically no, because the climate problem requires more than 90% reduction of CO2 emitted, and no amount of efficiency improvement is enough."

Although developed countries can make huge gains in energy efficiency, Gates claimed those gains would be wiped out entirely by the relentless and rapid rise in energy consumed by developing nations.

More than 90% percent of energy subsidies support well-established energy technologies, which leaves only a fraction of available funds for research into disruptive energy technologies, according to Gates.

"You can buy as much old technology as you want, but you won't get breakthroughs which only come out of basic research," said Gates.

Gates has invested massive amount of money in nuclear energy start-ups like Bellevue, Wash.-based TerraPower, which has pioneered a nuclear reactor that is capable of running for 50 years without refueling.